Giving Our Lives For Theirs: In Defense of Daniel Shaull
It has been one week since a man set himself on fire outside a fur store in Portland and died. In the responses from activists that followed, there has been what I see as insulting disregard, and the few standing up to say there is a greater significance to his death.
Most sentiments on the death of Daniel Shaull fall on the side of “just another crazy person taking their life”. Activists have run for cover to deny or distance themselves from this act. I question if these responses come from an action that confronts us with some uncomfortable truths. I think we all wish our actions were as commensurate with the urgency of 10 billion non-human animals killed each year as those of Daniel Shaull, that we were capable of such a sacrifice to awaken the world to their plight.
Debates over the strategic value of self-immolation are irrelevant. As are discussions of Shaull’s mental health. I don’t think it is the place of anyone, myself included, sitting behind the safety of a computer to cast stones at someone who broke out of that safety zone and did something. Especially someone who is dead.
When someone takes their life in solitude, and in a way devoid of larger impact, we call it “tragic”. When a man takes his life outside a fur store to give his death greater significance, we call it “crazy”.
I will not rob Daniel Shaull of his last statement to this earth with such dismissiveness.
– Peter Young
The below article covers these points better than I could.
Simulposted with Negotiation Is Over and Thomas Paines Corner
Searching for the Significance of a Life and a Death
By: Cat
Yesterday, a man set himself on fire outside Ungar Furs, and burned himself to death. We know his name now: According to the Alliance, it was Daniel Shaull. And we know that what he did appears to have been in solidarity with the animals who continue to die horrible deaths, day after day after day, to keep Nicholas Ungar in business. We know that, even as he was on fire and undoubtedly in terrible pain, he mustered great strength and tried to go inside the fur store to spread the flames to the coats and garments and blood-stained profits of the last fur store in Portland.
I would like to know more.
Indeed, it was strange to find out he was someone most of us did not know. Those of us who were not there yesterday, who scrambled to find out who it was, we each had a fear in the pit of the stomach, each of us sure we would know him, each of us having someone or other in mind that it might be. I know I did. When I finally heard his name, a small sense of relief washed over me, because it was a name I did not know. But someone knew him. And he deserves his story. If you knew Daniel Shaull, please post your stories of his life here.
If you did not know him but you just want to offer your critique of self immolation as a tactic, please just keep your useless judgments to yourself. This is the morning after, the place where all the bone-pickers will come in and make dismissive claims about this man and his last act of sacrifice. You know what I’m saying. “This is going too far,” “he was just crazy,” “he was a terrorist,” “this tactic is too extremist,” and perhaps the most unforgivable of all, “this will make us all look bad.”
I’m not ready to dismiss the significance of this man’s last act so easily.
Every year, more than 50 million animals – many of them dogs and cats – die for the fur industry. They die needless, painful, and suffering deaths so that people like Nicholas Ungar can make a lot of money, and so that vain, selfish, irredeemably thoughtless people can wear those animals’ skins. Fifty MILLION beings, every single year, killed in horrific and unceasingly bizarre ways. For nothing. Absolutely nothing. Some of them are picked up by their hind legs and pounded against the cement until they die. Some have metal bars shoved into their mouths, and electrodes pressed against their anus, and are electrocuted. Some are gassed. Some are trapped in the wild, and spend days on end struggling to free themselves. Terrified, dehydrated, hungry, cold, and mutilated, they wait for the trapper to come. I have personally witnessed a fur trapper approaching a frightened little bobcat like this, right here in the woods of Cascadia, and then unceremoniously beating her over the head, repeatedly, with a baseball bat. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. Until she finally died.
Sometimes, these animals are beaten unconscious, and they awaken while they are being skinned alive. This is not just some far off, urban legend thing. This is something real and immediate and horrible. I have seen this happen, and watched as the trapper just laughed and taunted the half-skinned, dying animal. Her last screams jeered at, the violation of her being complete. Her bloody little body went into a pile of bloody little bodies just like hers. Her skin was sold in someone’s garage, on the first leg of the journey to Ungar or Schumachers, or Nordstroms.
This is what Nicholas Ungar sells.
Unimaginable suffering, for nothing. A lot of people just don’t care. A lot of people think wearing fur is acceptable, and that making a living off this kind of unending suffering is tolerable. It’s the people who care that are labeled “terrorist.” The killers are just “businessmen.” Some people actually defend the practice, many more just don’t care enough to do anything about it. Still others like to get all philosophical and “tolerant” and pretend to be above it all. (I have seen a lot of that here on this site in recent days. These are the people who also defend slaughter houses, and lab experiments. Cold, academic justifications for horrific acts of violence. Disembodied philosophizing and dismissive tomes meant to put those who actually give a damn “in their places.” Here, for example: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2010/01/396920.shtml, and here: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2010/01/396920.shtml, and here: link to portland.indymedia.org.)
Is it really all that hard to understand, that someone could find that they just can’t take it any more? They just can’t stand by and do nothing, even when there is nothing left to do? Is it really so difficult to comprehend that this man could be so profoundly moved by such an unimaginable injustice, that he would be willing to actually sacrifice his own life in a last desperate act?
Not to me. I get it. I can understand that frustration and pain and desperation. I have felt it myself, and I think that any one of us who was born with the ability to empathize with non-human animals in this cold-hearted world has felt it too. We might not be lighting ourselves on fire, but deep down inside, I think we understand Daniel Shaull’s desperation and despair. Even if we did not know him, we know what it feels like to bear witness, day after day, to the intentionally inflicted pain and suffering of others, and to feel so mutely powerless to make it stop. We watch in horror as a never ending stream of animal victims is poured into the maw of human hatred and indifference. We cannot understand how humans can be so needlessly, thoughtlessly, cruel. And we cannot understand why their eyes cannot be opened to the pain and suffering they are causing. Sometimes, even our “friends” turn out to be the kind of people who either cause this suffering, or try to excuse it. God, it gets so frustrating after awhile… and it never ends.
If you care about animals in this human world, it’s easy to feel like you are alone in a sea of inexplicable hatred. It isn’t even just the people wielding the metal pipes in the slaughter houses, or the electrodes on the fur farms. It’s not just the people with the guns and the deer heads tied to the front of their “rigs.” It’s not just the people shoving load after load after load of cats and dogs into gas chambers, or the people gouging baby mice out of their mothers’ bellies in laboratories. It’s not just the assholes offering “chicken chokin” classes, or the old men making money selling furs. It’s also all the mind-numbingly cold people who build word monuments to themselves over it – defending it and justifying it and dismissing it. It’s the overwhelming awareness of all the suffering in the world, and the strange ostracism of anyone who can see it, who tries to point it out.
This can be a cold, hard world for people of compassion for the animals. Even radicals often just don’t get it.
It may actually turn out that Daniel Shaull suffered from mental illness. But in this world, I sometimes think mental illness and desperate acts might be the only sane response.
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I think of this young man as above average in terms of the world of ARA. He made a statement, I would bet, few would contemplate. I imagine he felt hopeless and helpless with regards to the state in which innocents are treated today. I consider this man a martyr for the cause of innocent beings and I don’t give a damn what others feel; he gave HIS LIFE in his belief that out of his sacrifice some small iota of hope would arise.
This man simply did just what I keep thinking of doing myself. I don’t think I’ll do it myself because I have a psychiatric history and they’ll just say I was mad. According to me Daniel Shaull was perfectly sane. I think he had seen some footage of animal abuse or on the television or on the computer and it suddenly woke him up in some way. For me we have to regard him as a heroe and commemorate his death every year.
I did a modest act of destruction of my personal property to compensate for the suffering of a laboratory mouse. I destroyed my piano. I would recommend sacrifices like this instead of self immolation as although I would not dare to critisise the act of Daniel Shaull I think we can better demonstrate that by burning our cars etc. we are horryfied by the torture of animals. Our lives are very important so that we can defend animals. if we were all dead we couldn’t do anything. Anyway Daniel Shaull made a very heroic gesture and it must NOT be forgotten..
what a tragic chain of events. obviously Daniel Shaull felt unloved and isolated, hence this unbelievably brutal act. i am not going to be one to guess at his motivations, or his pain and inner struggles, no one will ever know not even his family,. im not one to shamelessly co-opt this act into some imagined statement or sacrifice for the animals. RIP Daniel Shaull.
thanks for posting this, peter. daniel’s action is so difficult to put into words – but his memory and his cause deserves our utmost respect. it brings new meaning to the phrase “rest in peace” – for how can anyone of us sincerely be in peace in this world?
“I think we all wish our actions were as commensurate with the urgency of 10 billion non-human animals killed each year as those of Daniel Shaull, that we were capable of such a sacrifice to awaken the world to their plight.”
yes. yes.
When one of our human brothers does an act to bring attention to the plight of our non-human brothers and sisters, it brings home to each and every one of us realities we may not want to hear.
In turn this can lead humans to riddicule, judge and disrespect in order to continue with our own lives as though these things just don’t exist – things we would rather not know about. For what Daniel Shaull has done should be on the front pages of the news and newspapers – but instead we read about footballers and their infidelities, a story that will go on for weeks or even months (what a sad society we live in).
Real news, news that awakens us a a human being, is cut off rather quickly. After all, the establishment does not want to cause any disturbance or people may begin to see their own part in the cruelty that exists today in the products they purchase!
There is a saying for horsemen, but one that relates to each of us in this case with Daniel Shaull;
‘A great horsembut a bad horseman can’t even hear their horse scream’.
Daniels acted like he did because society did not hear his whisper. Some people are a lot more sensitive than others and these acts of suffering in the non-human world for what?????????? is enough to sent anyone with a conscience to such an act.
For every one finger we point at another, three are pointing back at ourselves. Let us look at the three pointing back and ask what we can do so Daniel’s act of self-sacrifice was not in vein.
Becoming all we can be………
Michele-Jane Walton
that relate when wI
When one of our human brothers does an act to bring attention to the plight of our non-human brothers and sisters, it brings home to each and every one of us realities we may not want to hear.
In turn this can lead humans to riddicule, judge and disrespect in order to continue with our own lives as though these things just don’t exist – things we would rather not know about. For what Daniel Shaull has done should be on the front pages of the news and newspapers – but instead we read about footballers and their infidelities, a story that will go on for weeks or even months (what a sad society we live in).
Real news, news that awakens us a a human being, is cut off rather quickly. After all, the establishment does not want to cause any disturbance or people may begin to see their own part in the cruelty that exists today in the products they purchase!
There is a saying for horsemen, but one that relates to each of us in this case with Daniel Shaull;
‘A great horsemman can hear their horse whisper, but a bad horseman can’t even hear their horse scream’.
Daniels acted like he did because society did not hear his whisper. Some people are a lot more sensitive than others and these acts of suffering in the non-human world are for what??????????…. greed!!! It is enough to send anyone with a conscience to such an act.
Let us remember, that for every one finger we point at another, three are pointing back at ourselves. Let us look at the three pointing back and ask what we can do so Daniel’s act of self-sacrifice was not in vein.
Becoming all we can be………
Michele-Jane Walton
A Moratorium and the Death of Daniel Shaull
author: Marlena Gangi e-mail: guerrilla.girl.is@gmail.com
It seems that the death of Daniel Shaull has been high jacked by the Animal Rights Movement. He has been eulogized, practically canonized and already immortalized by some AR activists, all within hours of his death in front of Ungar Furs in Portland, Oregon. Other AR activists who find it best to distance themselves from Shaull’s death state their position just as firmly. In the meantime, both sides are at war on the Internet. Should a moratorium on this discussion be self imposed until all facts are in?
The demise of Daniel Shaull and the fury with which AR activists have leaped to new heights (new lows?) to claim this stranger as their noble martyr, their poster child of all things holy and vegan, is almost surpassed by other ARers who warn against a rush to judgment with the sentiment that there is nothing political about his act of self immolation, that he was a suicidal, mentally ill young man who chose to soak himself in gasoline and light himself ablaze. The fact that he did this in front of the last remaining fur store in Portland seems obvious proof to many who stand on the words of a witness who claims that Shaull screamed, “Animals are dying!” before collapsing. This has been retracted, however as others present at the time now say that his words were intelligible.
There are more contradicting issues. Ungers claims that Shaull was a regular AR protestor outside their store. Shaull’s father Warren claims that his son was only in Portland for five days prior to his death. He is unknown to the Portland Animal Defense League, the AR group that coordinates the Fur Free Friday protests outside Unger Furs.
Little is known about about Daniel other than what his father has to offer. The view he gives is one of a father who is coming to terms with the death of a son whom he already knew had a history of suicidal tendencies. “There is nothing political about this. He was just tired of living.” He also ponders that someone may have put it up to the tragic act.
Even with this, the opposing AR camps continue to tear each other apart across the Internet, safe and snug in cloaks of anonymity. One group rips the other 2nd and 3rd assholes for distancing themselves from Shaull’s action. More assholes are torn as the other group protests that this action lies in the category of extremism and that there lies the danger that in embracing Shaull’s death as an act of ultimate sacrifice, more AR activists will be labeled as terrorists with more persecution certain to unfold under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. I have in fact already heard the word terrorist applied to Daniel Shaull. This should leave you speechless.
“My father dying…”
Perhaps most disturbing are the posts found online that attack and lay blame on Daniel’s father, Warren Shaull. On Portland’s [OR]Independent Media Collective self publishing site, there is this entry:
Warren sucks
So daddy dearest believes that in 5 days someone got ahold of his son, and had more influence than 26 years of togetherness with his own father could do.
I firmly believe that the father is trying to deal with his grief and guilt over his sorry lack of parenting (the son’s final words are instructive) by looking for a scapegoat, no matter how ridiculous.
Often I think that the way that kids turn out is independent of parenting, but in this case, the father’s actions and words are telling as to how isolated poor Daniel must have felt growing up.”
There is also this written by “mouse:”
“What did Daniel’s dad say to him Wednesday morning when Daniel called and asked for a sleeping bag? That was just a few hours before Daniel lit himself on fire. Someone should investigate that. If you knew your son was suicidal when he left town, then why did you let him leave? Why did his family not help him? I think his family and friends should be questioned so we can see the whole picture. They also need to interview Teen Mission and find out why he was directed towards Portland Rescue Mission. Portland Rescue Mission needs to be investigated. THE POLICE need to be investigated. There is just so much left out that we still don’t know about. Can somebody in Kansas interview his family and friends? AARRG”
And this by “Vegan Cabal:”
“Redress of greivances
sounds like my Dad’s trust in the system and persecution of anything critical of capitalist tradition and the nuclear family normative. From Warren’s initial statement that this wasn’t a political action we could take the hint that he, like most American fathers, lost time getting to know his son because adherence to the capitalist (dis)order means survival, retirement, “social security”.
When the cops give us an obvious reason we must respond. How are po-lice, or parents so detached from a sense of empathy to see suffering and not respond with compassion? Warren would do well to investigate the situation of systemic abuse of animals, his son probably wanted to show him, as I tried for my dad, and he probably shit on the sentiment as a “weak” ideology like mine did.
Love is the way of strength.
That gives him no credibility for me, yet the worthless Feds might intend to pursue those fantasies for appeasement of “his loss”. I see the vegan community here lost an unknown ally because dominion aligned predators like that cop and the 75% Christian demographic of America desire business as usual for security, to push the reality of suffering that feeds and clothes them further from awareness.
REALLY, MY FATHER DYING WOULD REDUCE THE PARTICIPANTS OF MEAT, LEATHER, DAIRY AND VIVISECTION INDUSTRY BY ONE, AND WARREN SHAULL REMINDS ME OF MY DAD SIGNIFICANTLY [caps mine]. Sometimes extremism gives us in a single action what decades of symbolic actions don’t achieve, though all tactics are there for people with different-abledness and willingness.
Our speciesist war rages on and resistance allied with nonhumyns and eARTh is gaining traction. I want to rally to honor the humyn casualties in the struggle and protest disgusting abuse of power of that sadist spraying pepper spray, that is just vile. Where is PDX copwatch on this? Is anyone else feeling like protesting at the precinct and honoring Daniel’s action at Ungar?”
…
With this, one must wonder if this a most inopportune time for AR activists to quickly pledge more unbridled compassion for animals than for humans. Have you ever lost a child or feared the loss of a child due to sudden onset of illness? I have. Have you ever lost a loved one to mental illness, drugs and the street, all three of these? I have. We see the demand that this family be scrutinized with no time to waste, and no time for a family to grasp or grieve. The Shaull family may not have even claimed the body of there son, yet here we have we have a few laying blame, simply because they can.
We know nothing about this family. We don’t know if Daniel was raised in a safe, child centered environment. We have no idea how equipped or ill-equipped his family was in dealing with a mentally ill child. Was Daniel violent? To himself or others? We just don’t know.
This story, as you guess, does have my interest. I am presently attempting to verify that Daniel was completely apolitical in every sense of the word in spite of his statement to his father that he came to Portland because he believed there to be a large vegetarian demographic here. I am also trying to verify that Daniel exacerbated an already precarious mental state by self medicating. Is it possible that, as one has stated, one drug of choice was meth? Certainly a severely mind altering drug in any case. To be clear, I am NOT stating this as fact or in any attempt to gossip or slander. We simply just do not know all of what is quickly appearing to be a polarizing story…
There are poignant posts on all of this to be found on online self publishing sites in the need for some to attach meaning to all of this. Some of what has been written is truly poetic. Some of what has been written is offered in such lofty, idyllic prose that it floats right off the screen while seeming to serve to make the author feel good about themselves rather than anyone or anything else. In all seriousness, maybe this all means that radical activists should bear in mind that each faction shares a common enemy before embarking on serious shit slinging. Maybe it means that a dead body should not still be warm before people who know nothing about the life that was once attached to that body assign meaning. And maybe it means that one should check ego and arrogance and lose the hubris that you think gives you the right to attach any meaning at all.
Words for thought: A little over a decade ago, a U.S. political prisoner was released from prison. A close friend of mine was heavily involved in coordinating support for this PP. As a result, this PP gained a huge following and much hero worship; fund raising dollars rolled into his prison account, celebrations in numerous cities took place upon his release, etc. However, shortly before his release my friend placed a couple of long, late night long distance calls to me. His concern was that this PP might not all be who they had been built up to be. “Marlena,” he said, “what if _________ gets out and it turns out ________ is nothing more than a real asshole?”
Long and short of it, without going in to details; turns out that __________ WAS a real asshole. Turned out that so much meaning that had been attached to __________ had no connection to any sort of reality. So much meaning had been attached to this person by activists who had never met _________, let alone aware of any part of the PP’s dark past…
How many of you have lost long trusted friends in the course of the past two days because of a need to attach meaning to the death of Daniel Shaull? How many have found that they have been devastated by those who you thought you once knew? How many of you are in fear at now being uncertain about just who has your back? Can you recognize a need for moratorium in all of this?
Was all of your shit slinging worth it?
I THINK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US AS ACTIVISTS AND ANIMAL LOVERS HAS AT SOME POINT IN OUR LIVES FELT THE TOTAL HELPLESSNESS AND DESPAIR THAT THIS MAN OBVIOUSLY FELT. HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR SOMETHING HE DEEPLY BELIEVED IN. SADLY HIS DEATH WILL NOT END THE HOLOCAUST.
I cannot stand the simple minded stupidity of “animal rights” morons. The basis of all life on this planet is the FOOD CHAIN. Animals higher up on the chain kill and eat other animals in horrible brutal ways. It happens millions of times a day. BOO HOO …. You total morons pissing into the wind with your stupid fur protests, CAN NEVER STOP IT… You are all mentally ill for trying to link human to human rights with animals…It’s just as sick and wrong as humans having sex with animals.
I was the “vegan cabal” commenter. The morning when I found out about it was when I went to the protest as I had for up to five days each week for about a year. There were marks on the ground and building, there were cops. We learned from the Bombay Chaat House food cart across the street about what transpired. They weren’t sure who did it. I wasn’t at Ungar the day that it happened, I was working to pay rent, although a modest amount, it was a stressful time. My Dad and I don’t have a great relationship still, yet I’m ashamed that I was so critical in attempting to relate to his psychological state. It was as if the dyke holding back my suppressed misanthropy and disgust, for what our species has inflicted on the earth and fellow animals, burst because of unprecedented stress. I didn’t know who it was until hours later; didn’t realize it was him whom I never knew. Commemorating the date is a plan.
Strange comments regarding Daniel Shaull’s death. The F.B.I. called me about one year after Daniel’s death and informed me that after undercover investigation the result of his death was MURDER. What are you trying to cover up? MIND CONTROL is very hard to prove but that was the method used to MURDER DANIEL SHAULL. That is exactly what the undercover F.B.I. Special Agent assured me. Your opinions only profit your cause but are not truthful. You are publishing lies that hide the truth. WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVE? Rev. Warren Shaull